First published in  In Our Shoes: LGBTQ anthology (New Wasteland) in June of 2021 for only $5! I have two other poems included.

Like so many people 

I have trouble letting go: 

Birthday cards, holiday cards, 

theater programs, artwork by my kid,

found objects and surviving earrings

that someday might become art.  

Meanwhile the snow piles up

buries everything in a blanket of white.

The temperature drops to twelve degrees. 

Nothing can survive outside for very long.

Yet there are people and cats and hawks

trying to do just that. 

We are living through a pandemic, 

not even the first of my lifetime

just the first one to get the money 

and scientists’ attention for a vaccine 

in under a year.  Unheard of. 

Ghosts of gay men shake their heads. 

These days, I rarely leave my house. 

Grocery pick up, check the mail, runs

at least once a week. I’ve started running 

through the cemetery. 

Tombstones from the 1600’s mingle 

with Boy Scouts labeling the trees.  

Somedays survival is all we can do

The snow will melt, the earth is warming,

the kid grows up 

far too quickly

for something wanted for so long. 

So many onesies he only wore once.